A spray-on coating to keep power lines standing through an ice storm may not be the obvious fix for winter outages ' but it's exactly the kind of innovation that happens when MIT students tackle a sustainability challenge. 'The big threat to the power line network is winter icing that causes huge amounts of downed lines every year,' says Trevor Bormann, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and member of MITten, the winning team in the 2025 MADMEC innovation contest. Fixing those outages is hugely carbon-intensive, requiring diesel-powered equipment, replacement materials, and added energy use. And as households switch to electric heat pumps, the stakes of a prolonged outage rise. To address the challenge, the team developed a specialized polymer coating that repels water and can be sprayed onto aluminum power lines. The coating contains nanofillers ' particles hundreds of times smaller than a human hair ' that give the surface a texture...
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